"the luck to trust the right people ... the tough luck to see the worst of the wrong people."

The Trick to Converting Conspiracy Theorists and Evangelization
Breaking In The Habit | 23 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOEtzwsSTF4

1:33 I actually did change my mind at least once in my life because I lost an argument.

One day in 1990, I was talking to a convert whom I had welcomed in, since he had converted that year.

I tried to defend Vatican II and the establishment resulting from it. And I couldn't.

Since then, I am a trad. Very largely described. By the way, the guy who had humiliated me had done so before this - namely two men. Two priests I had had as father confessor.

5:17 This is why I think my debates on the internet are at the heart of whatever mission there might be for my apologetics.

I give some people a chance to be a jerk against the creationist, and some fall for it.

I also give them equally and preferrably a chance to come with facts.

And to get a bit more silent when I have given my answers.

Sure, if I have a debate with Dick Harfield, as currently is the case, where he impugns the historical reliability of Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther and Acts, republishing this debate in commercial format should in fairness of simple copyright issues depend in part on his admission for such reuse. Actually, I think it would be fair enough if he were offered a part of the proceedings, alternatively an equal right to publish it on his part with those doing so for me, but he might get lawyers on his side. So, my essays, where no one else's words are extensively involved in about equal proportions to mine actually are a big investment. Plus, I don't have a debate everyday.

BUT it will be a fairly edifying spectacle for our readers - his and mine - on the republication (for free) I do on my blog, to see him go from confidently factual to being snarky at my supposed impudence in not bowing down to experts ... you know Liberal to non-believing "Biblical scholars" plus those of natural sciences.

Trey Smith is not my greatest social asset, when he takes jabs at Darwin that are morally wrong as well as factually wrong (distrusting someone because he "doesn't have a real work" or "real degree" and this on top of it not being Darwin's case on the Beagle). But he certainly beats people who try to "educate" me on the "actual" meaning of the word "legend" and on trusting "appropriate" expertise (including Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier), as is the case with Dick Harfield.

8:06 Your list:

"Taylor Swift"

I think it is a good thing to avoid her songs, because of her endorsement of GLAAD. Credits to la Reezay for bringing this up.

Up to that, she had been pretty marginal after I tried to contact her for getting me artists to play my compositions, which she didn't do. I have no dislike of her style apart from message.

"Pumkin Spice"

Is that a Starbucks drink? Think I like it.

"the Latin Mass"

Was my first mass, when ma went from Vienna to Södertelge, she stopped in Munich and assisted a Mass in late 1968, perhaps around the 6th of October. Before the Liturgic Reform.

What I was convinced of, the day I lost an argument in 1990 was to avoid the New Mass.

"Boston sports teams"

I don't do sports.

"the Marvel Cinematic Universe"

I prefer the Marvel Comics universe as it was before X-Men came in ...

8:19 I can't answer, since none of these are things I really hate.

8:27 No amount of discomfort with people who go to St. Nicolas du Chardonnet and look down on me, it doesn't change the preference for the Mass of the Patristic, Scholastic and Second Scholastic times of the Latin Patriarchate.

By the way, since Pope Michael allowed it to be said in English (1958 books, presumably from the translations provided in "My Sunday Missal"), I prefer calling it Tridentine Mass.

It wasn't exclusively Latin before that either, the Glagolitic in Croatian, and an Huron version by Jesuit missionaries already existed. Who am I to disagree with St. Jean Bréboeuf?

8:38 I think you have just made the case Belloc made.

Impoverishing Catholics and Catholic clergy (insofar as it wasn't hanged, drawn and quartered) was a great way to make the English feel bad about Catholics and hence not listen to them.

I see some similarity to a tactic by some Catholics, who want this proponent of "Catholics should be Young Earth Creationist, and they would do very well to be Geocentric too" to look bad.

It is also a tactic by some Muslims who want this proponent of "Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Hesiod and Numa Pomilius had a thing in common" to look less than attractive.

And some Jews who don't like "Jesus is the true Messiah, Isaiah 11 already is fulfilled, Palestinians are Juda and Ephraim reunited" - and who would just love to reeducate me, and to make me "admit"' that all of this was a very absurd "conspiracy theory" ...

10:29 "is a huge social risk"

Which I took.

12:25 Distinguo.

If I were working primarily to influence Dick Harfield, it would not make sense to double down on facts or distinctions.

But if I hope a third party will be enlightened on what he and I say, and how each of us says it, perhaps it actually does make sense.

It's exactly one area, where I have hopes of still looking pretty good to people who in advance are as unbiassed as I was against any of your given list. Taylor Swift. Pumkin Spice. Marvel. Boston.

I'm obviously highly biassed for the Latin Mass or rather, as said, the Tridentine one.

13:23 Antipope "Paul VI' - Commies are right that Pentecostals are convincing and Scholastics aren't .... a résumé.

The fact of the matter is - "modern man" doesn't exist.

The "modern man" who dislikes Tridentine liturgy because it is impressive doesn't exist. Some may personally prefer it when it is less impressive. But to imagine either 1969 or 2022 this is the taste of all the masses - fiddlesticks (thanking CSL for providing a word that is less offensive than a certain US American one). It's like hanging around with lots of shrinks and then conclude "modern man believes in psychoanalysis" - when it's probable lots of young who are forced to it agree to it to avoid bad consequences, but don't really believe it.

13:50 "and care about the same things that they care about"

Even when they care about useless or hurtful things like "access to abortion" or "democracy" ...?

That's trying to be a convincing messanger, by forgetting the actual message.

What did a certain Bernadette Soubirous say?

"It's my task to transmit, not to convince"

Mutatis mutandis, I am not a prophet, it is my job to argue, whether I convince the other person or not.

14:22 "interested in nothing but money" (/fame)

Nice way to discredit an apologist who is poor and needs a publisher and some more viewers to start interesting one.

14:29 I am not the Church Universal.
It is not my duty to discard no one from listening to me. There are other ways into the Church than I am.

But, there is a certain type of intellectuals whom I could be really useful to - as CSL, even in his dryer moments, was to me.

If I believe I am right, it is not because I always have the facts on my side. About 10 years ago, I could make a blunder like attributing the 80 000 or 800 000 date of skeleta in Atapuerca to "carbon dating" which is not used for that far back. And argue on carbon buildup instead of the definitely other factors that fudge the probable Flood date for Atapuerca.

If I believe I am right, it is because I had the luck to trust the right people, starting with mother and grandpa, at first also grandma, and going on to Jesus and the Gospellers, to C. S. Lewis, to J. R. R. Tolkien, to G. K. Chesterton, to St. Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman, and to Hilaire Belloc.

And the tough luck, but for my intellect still luck, to see the worst of the wrong people.